For the first kind of data, deleting the data from the car the moment there’s confirmation that it now is stored at Tesla can make perfect sense as a mechanism to prevent the car to run out of storage space.
Of course, if the car crashed, deleting the data isn’t the optimal, but that it gets deleted may not be malice.
Anytime data is recorded legal is immediately asking about retention so they don't end up empty handed in front of a judge.
Every byte that car records and how it is managed will be documented in excruciating detail by legal.
As is deleting data. Also, for, say, training data for Tesla’s software, I don’t see legal requirements for keeping it around,
> There's no chance such a decision is accidently made by reusing code.
At Tesla? I know about nothing about their software development practices, but from them, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if this were accidental.
Edit: one scenario to easily introduce this bug is if the “delete data after upload” feature were added after the “on a crash, upload all data you have, in case the car burns down” feature.
If you selectively delete data, courts can assume that data is the worst possible thing for a court case against you.
In my experience, they are setting automated 90 deletion policies on email so they don't end up with surprises in discovery.
Like many things, the retention policy was actually a destruction policy
If Tesla are marking crash data to be deleted, then that's not designed to help the customer, but to protect Tesla.
But in the end we wouldn't be discussing this at all if Tesla had simply handed over the data from their servers. If they can't find it, it isn't actually there or they deliberately removed it this affects how I view this process.
Two copies are better than one. If you immediately erase the data, you better be sure the transmitted data is safe and secure. And obviously it wasn't.